3D Art Week 10 - Ground/Modular Rock Set

For this week, I worked on all the fixes from last week's in-class critique, as well as sculpting and texturing the ground plane and rock set.  I ran into a few issues, mostly involving UVs (or lack thereof) on the sculpts, but I've solved every issue with some help from my peers and worked out a pipeline that I was able to use for the later assets.  I found it fairly easy to make the rocks in Orb's style, but I'm not sure the texture on the ground plane quite matches...

Notes from the first critique session:

-make sure there is a nav mesh

-make sure ground plane has collision

-make super simple version of ground plane to use for collision

-only have one level in folder on Perforce

-check on player start height, align ground plane with grid

-decimate in ZBrush to maybe 2000 polys for large rock, 1500 for medium, 1000 for small

-make more of a visual path for player to get up to the monument

-move skull closer to player start, check scale to make sure it fits in the hole

-make sure skull is interactable 

-round out corners of play space so it's not so square

-flatten top of space where monument sits

-play with fog levels and atmosphere, create clear lighting scenario 

-populate grass/plants with foliage brush

Common Art Week 10 - Art Style Guides

This week, my team worked on analyzing the art style of Little Nightmares, which will be the main inspiration for our VR experience.  We met to discuss the division of the slides with a focus on which topics played to each person's strengths and art specialization.  We made the decision to each be individually responsible for 2-3 slides and then all add images to the Mood and Inspiration slides.  I made the base presentation template and created the slides for Characters and Iconography, making contributions to Mood and Inspiration as well.

note: the slides are almost the same color as the blog background, so the outlines on the slides make the edges look a bit strange; click on the images to see them properly

3D Art Week 9 - VR Environment Proxy Models

 

My VR environment is mainly inspired by steampunk designs, ritualistic concepts, and photographs of nature reclaiming areas that once belonged to man (I hope to implement this last one a bit more once I have my final models and materials).  The interactive item will be the skull on the ground - when the player places it in the hole on the monument, the lights will turn on.

Common Art Week 9 - Understanding Story

My team will be recreating the tea party scene from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (by Lewis Carroll) in the style of Tim Burton.  

For the Hero's Journey assignment, we met as a team several times and came up with an original story with the Dormouse as the Hero, the Mad Hatter as the Herald, the March Hare as the Mentor, a bloodthirsty plant as the Threshold Guardian, talking flowers as the Tricksters, the March Hare as the Shapeshifter, and the Cheshire Cat as the Shadow.  We decided to use a more sinister look for this assignment as well, though it's not exactly Tim Burton yet.

I made the template PowerPoint for the team, and we decided to break the assignment into equal portions, so that we each were responsible for 3 slides (or, 3 stops on the Hero's Journey.)  My slides were the Return, New Life, and Resolution/new Status Quo.  Below are the images I made in Photoshop compositing over 15 images and some hand-painted details:

Return: The Dormouse returns to the Tea Party with the cookie

New Life: The Mad Hatter no longer tries to stuff the Dormouse into tea pots - the Dormouse is now more well-respected.

Resolution/New Status Quo: Alice eats the cookie and returns to normal size.  The March Hare promises the Dormouse he can help make the cookies next time.  The Dormouse goes back to sleep.

3D Art Week 7 - Final Version of the Cannon

There are still a few details I might change with this project, but after several texture revisions the final screenshots are finally here!  The first few are high-resolution screenshots from Unreal Engine 5, and the last few are renders from Substance Painter.  I'm really happy with how this cannon turned out, and I'm excited to use what I've learned for future projects!

Common Art Week 6 - Use of Perspective

 

I was unsure what I wanted to do with this assignment, but then I searched for "military transport vehicle" and found a lot more inspiration than I was counting on - I finally settled for this Cougar 6x6, and ended up having a lot of fun making the model and had a hard time deciding when to stop; there's still so much I could do with it.  If I had more time, I would definitely keep working on this model and the art to make a fully photorealistic scene!

3D Art Week 6 - Cannon Sculpting

 

This week, I focused on sculpting my cannon in ZBrush.  It took a lot longer than expected, but I think all the effort definitely paid off.  I used a variety of techniques, including extruding a design using an alpha, making my own alphas, freehand sculpting, and the noise plugin (that part was my favorite).  The parts of the cannon were grouped by type, decimated in ZBrush and exported as the high-res models, so the cannon is now completely ready to re-mesh and texture.